The Extremist, By: Fred van Lente (writer), Patrick Olliffe, Javier Rodriguez & Nick Dragotta (art), Andres Mossa (colors) & Clayton Cowles (letters)
Jackpot in Reflections, By: Marc Guggenheim (writer), Sana Takeda (art), Dave Sharpe (letters)
The Story: Spider-Man continues to grapple with The Extremist, a mysterious character who aims to eliminate the “shades of grey” and make it a black and white world. In the backup, Jackpot is caught in a sticky situation having to do with the death of her husband.
What’s Good: Well, Marvel is doing a good job of making Web of Spider-Man worth picking up. They just have a LOT of good Spider-Man stories to tell right now. So much so that this week featured FOUR full length Spidey-comics and all were at least pretty good. I really like the main story in the Extremist. The “villain” is a dude with possibly mutant powers who can see a person’s essence: are the good, are they wishy-washy, are they bad, etc. And he is out to eliminate the wishy-washy from the face of the Earth. This story is just chock full of irony as the Extremist initially likes Spider-Man (who is pure and good) and wants to help him by attacking those people who would tear him down, but Spider-man must oppose him because Spider-Man defends everyone…whether it is in his best interest or not. Very clever stuff as the Extremist starts to notice the similarities and differences between Peter Parker and Spider-Man. We even get a decent X-Men cameo in this issue and the tantalizing possibility that the Extremist could be a mutant of sorts. Isn’t it funny how the possibility of a mutant isn’t so annoying now that we’re years after House of M? And we get more of Peter’s roommate Michelle! And….she has a shotgun! I really like her character and her relationship with Peter.
I also like that this story doesn’t seem to be required Spider-reading. It isn’t too heavily tied to the major storylines going on in Amazing Spider-Man: The Gauntlet or The Grim Hunt.
For a story with 3 artists, the art was pretty good. Often when you see that, it means that there was some kind of emergency with one artist not getting their work done on time, but in this case it looks like they proactively split the story apart by having one artist do the story in the past, one do the current story, etc.
What’s Not So Good: Call me a hypocrite, but there is such a thing as too much Spider-Man. I LIKE that I got four good Spider-stories this week, but this stuff is cyclical and you know Marvel will keep publishing even if they don’t have four good ones. This Extremist story could happen any time, so why not just save it and do it in Amazing Spider-Man in a month or two and give out wallets a break, huh?
I also didn’t really love the Jackpot story. Maybe it was because I was Spidered-out by the time I read it. True it is just a back-up tale, but I read almost 100 pages of Spider-Man this week. 100 pages! So, I just don’t care about a back-up story about a minor character that is casually tied to Spider-Man.
Sometimes I feel like Marvel cranks out these “extra” titles just to keep creator-talent busy and keep them in-house so they aren’t off creating cool titles at Image.
Conclusion: “Unfortunately” if you like good Spider-Man stories, you’ll want to keep getting Web of Spider-Man because it’s pretty good right now. 🙂
Grade: B
-Dean Stell